


The Absolution

by bluebellsandcocklesshells



Series: 642 Prompts [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 10:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6751294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebellsandcocklesshells/pseuds/bluebellsandcocklesshells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Prompt 8: Write about a time you broke a heart.</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Absolution

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 8: Write about a time you broke a heart.

Dean watched the lights from the cars outside flitter across the darkened bedroom wall.  It wasn’t a major highway outside their home, but it always had its fair share of traffic even at two in the morning.  The slatted blinds made the lights weave in a hypnotic pattern, but he still couldn’t fall asleep.  He knew sex made a lot of people sleepy, his husband for instance often reacted to it like a dose of Zzzquil, but he always felt energized afterwards.  Like he could run a marathon or climb Everest.  It was why he often tried to get his husband to agree to morning sex rather than bedtime sex.  Tonight the man had put on an old T-shirt advertising the “Mirror, Mirror” episode of _Star Trek_ , so Dean had had no choice but to take him at the foot of the bed.  Of course that meant now his beloved was snoozing like a baby and he was watching the lights chase each other on the wall.

And yet…there were no words he could think of to describe the moment other than contentment, happiness, security…

He would never share those words with anyone of course, he wasn’t some sort of modern day sap who was totally in touch with his emotions and his “feminine side” and all that warm, fuzzy cra—

“Dean?” his husband snorted awake.

“Yeah, babe?”

The man groaned and buried his face in Dean’s side.  “You awake?”

“Not really.”

“Mmm…”

Dean glanced down at him, wondering if he’d fallen asleep again.

“Are you thinking?” came a voice muffled by T-shirt and pectoral muscle.

“Hey now, you know me better than that.”

His husband grunted in annoyance.  He didn’t like it when Dean disparaged himself.

“Go back to sleep, babe,” Dean whispered, kissing the soft hair tickling his chin.

“Talk to me.”

Dean rolled his eyes.  He’d had more than one deep, meaningful conversation with his husband only to discover that the twit had fallen asleep on him.  But, he did love him, so he decided to humor him.

“About what?”

“Tell me something…you’ve never told me before.”

“Am I supposed to keep track of all that?” Dean asked.  “I don’t know what you know.”

“Tell me something bad.”

Dean chuckled.  “Are you sure you’re up for another round?”

“Not dirty.  Bad.  Tell me something about yourself that you’re not proud of.”

Dean went very still, his heart making an out of rhythm beat at the request.  He glanced down and saw that his husband was still nestled against him, eyes closed peacefully.

“W-what?  Why?”

“Because then you’ll know that I’ll stay with you no matter what.”

“What if you don’t?  What if I’ve done something that you can’t accept?  You’ll file for divorce.”

“Nah,” the man mumbled.  “Too much paperwork.”

Dean let out a small, soft laugh.  He wasn’t really amused by where the conversation was going, but it wasn’t out of character for the man beside him to make decisions based on his hatred of bureaucracy.  It had been a bitch of a fight and ten years just to get the guy to marry him in the first place.  Not that Dean ever told anyone that _he_ had been the one to beg and plead for the marriage.  Especially since he’d been the cool and calm one while the Bridezilla over there had driven everyone mad with “No, it’s Silvery Mist not Misty Silver—they’re two different colors!”

“Alright.  You want to know about the time I cheated on one of my college finals?”

“No.”

“Um…how about the time I saw a woman broken down on the side of the road with two crying kids and I didn’t stop because I didn’t want to miss kickoff at the Chiefs season opener?”

“I was in the car with you.”

“Oh, yeah.  How about the time I deliberately broke up my brother and his girlfriend’s relationship?”

“Maybe if I believed for a second that getting Sam to dump Ruby was something you weren’t proud of.”

“Yeah…really didn’t like her…”

“Dean.”

“Yes?”

“Tell me about a time you broke someone’s heart.”

Dean flinched and the man beside him raised his head.

“What happened?  Are you okay?”

“Yeah.  Just, um, the start of a cramp in my leg.”  He flexed his foot for show.  “I got it.”

His husband buried his head back in his side.  “Alright then.  Tell me that.”

Dean chewed on his lip.  He didn’t want to talk about that.  Ever.  “What if I’ve never broken a heart?  I mean, women find out I’m married and it breaks hearts across the nation, but I take it that’s not what you mean.”

“You’ve never broken someone’s heart?”

“Not everyone has, you know.”

“I guess that’s true,” the man conceded.

“Have you?” Dean asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“About fifteen years ago.  I was dating this guy.  I think he was going to ask me to marry him.”

Dean grinned.  “And then I came along.”

“And then you came along.”

Dean wrapped his arm around his husband’s shoulder and pulled him closer.  “I like that story.”

“He doesn’t like it so much.  I guess it depends on your perspective.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“So, no broken hearts?”

Dean’s smile faded and he stared at the ceiling.  He tightened his fingers around his husband’s deltoid muscle.  Several long moments passed.  He surprised himself when he spoke.

“There was one guy.  Back in high school.”

The man beside him didn’t react.  He might have fallen asleep in the long interval.  Dean chose to believe that; it would make the story easier to tell.

“So…I was pretty closeted in high school, right?  Military dad, religious mother.  I was also raised to be a bit of homophobic dick.  So after I fooled around with a guy, I usually helped to beat him up at school the next day.  I don’t know why none of them ever outed me; I would have deserved it.

“I liked my set-up: publicly date girls and sleep with enough of them to get a reputation as a womanizing dog, and then privately date guys and get all the D on the down low that I wanted.  I…”  Dean exhaled heavily.  “Actually, I hated my set-up.  I hated myself.  I hated my parents for…well.  That’s all in the past.

“So that’s how I was.  Until I met him.  We were at an away game.  I was pitching the best I ever had.  I was on fire.  I had a perfect game on the line—everyone was cheering for me, even the opposing team’s fans.  And I honestly can’t even remember if I did manage to pitch a perfect game or not.  Because I saw him.  Pretty face, wild hair, biggest blue eyes you’ve ever seen in your life.  He was like…this otherworldly creature that had decided to observe humans for a day or something.  It’s kind of a fitting description actually—he had a weird fucking name.  Castiel.  Some kind of angel.”

Dean rubbed his forehead with his free hand.  “That’s probably why I wanted him so much at first.  Because I could pretend I was befouling an angel or something.  Get my mom with the angelic thing and my dad with the gay thing in one go.  Shit, I had issues, babe.  But I managed to charm him into thinking I was worth hanging around with.

“All summer long between junior and senior year, the two of us spent every waking moment together.  And some not waking ones.  We definitely spent a few nights under the stars.  And I know what you’re thinking—but it wasn’t sex.  Guy wouldn’t put out at first.  He’d let me kiss him occasionally, and it was so good I didn’t even think about the fact that I wasn’t getting sex.

“One night…”  Dean smiled fondly at the memory.  “One night we were out in some fricken’ cornfield because he wanted to look at stars away from the city lights.  And we lay together on the hood of my old Impala and talked.  No one ever got me to talk as much as Castiel did.  And then he said he wanted to do something.  He led me to the backseat of the car and then he climbed in my lap.  We didn’t have sex—he was adamant about not losing his virginity in the backseat of a car like some cliché—but God it felt better than anything I’d ever done up to that point.

“A few days later we were in the same cornfield during the day.  We’d tamped down a spot and covered it in blankets.  And that was our first time.  It was probably a thousand degrees out, humidity off the charts.  It was miserable just feeling your own clothes on your skin let alone someone else’s hot, sweaty skin.  And it was hard to breathe and the cicadas were ridiculously loud and distracting and it should have been horrible and awful…but…it was the best I’ve ever had.

“Don’t get me wrong, babe, you and I have got a top fifty list going on, you know?  But that time…I’ve never been that…well.  I guess it was the first time I wasn’t just having sex or fucking.  It was…well, I’m not gonna say the _term_ , but you know what I mean.”

Dean cleared his throat.  Perhaps it was time to move on to the part of the story he was actually supposed to be telling.

“After that, we were dating.  Secretly, of course, but it was real.  I didn’t go with anyone else—boy or girl—for the entirety of my senior year.  There were rumors that I was dating almost every girl in school, one of the teachers, a few desperate housewives, a porn star.”  Dean chuckled.  “Veandra Bendersnatch I believe was her name.  No one suspected I was dating one single person—and that it was a guy.  Probably because we didn’t go to the same school.  Otherwise I’m sure I would have given myself away around him.

“Going to different schools is probably the only reason our relationship lasted as long as it did.  Because he didn’t know the real me.  He didn’t know the guy who called people fags and shoved them into lockers.  He didn’t know the guy who slapped girls’ asses and called them sluts for sleeping around like boys did.  I…”

Dean swallowed.  That little bit of shame that usually he could keep corralled in a corner of his mind broke free and threatened to choke him.

“Fuck, I was such a shitty person, babe.  I was just a god-awful human being.”

Dean felt the slightest pressure on his ribs where his husband’s fingers curled a little tighter around him.  He forced his body to relax and accept the comfort.  He herded the shame back to where it lived mostly as a reminder of who he used to be—proof that he had changed.  That he worked hard to be different every day of his life.

“For graduation my parents threw me a party.  They knew I had a friend named Castiel, so they invited him.  And there he was—at a party with all my friends, my parents, my extended family.  And I acted like I barely knew who he was.  And the thing is, he never asked me to come out.  Not once.  He never asked to go on a real date.  Or to hold my hand in public.  He never asked when we were going to tell everybody.  For him the relationship was never more than him and me.  That’s all he needed.  But just seeing him mixed in with the life I’d constructed for myself—it felt like he was trying to tear it all down.  So, I went around telling everyone that we weren’t really friends anymore because I found out he was a faggot.  I laughed behind his back with my friends.  I agreed when my relatives made hateful comments.  I egged my dad on when he started making fun of him.  I was the one who finally told him that he wasn’t really welcome and that he needed to leave.  I—”

Dean gritted his teeth.  “Fuck.  Why do you want to hear this story?  The look on his face when I told him…what I said…he knew it wasn’t just an act for the party.  He knew I meant it.  And he knew I wanted him gone.  And the worst part wasn’t watching his heart fucking break in front of dozens of people—it was the look in his eyes like he’d known better.  Like he’d known all along I was trash and now he was having to admit it to himself finally.”

Dean’s next inhalation shuddered.  “He walked away quietly.  He didn’t try to hurt me or fight back.  He just left.  I thought I would never see him again.  I didn’t want to see him again.  Not after what I had done to him.  Done to myself.  But I guess…the Universe took pity on me.  After I’d finally come to terms with myself and came out to my family and decided to not live with my head up my ass—I had a chance to apologize to him.  It was way too little and way too fucking late.”

Dean rubbed his eyes to clear his watery vision.

“Why did you forgive me, Cas?”

His husband raised his head and looked down at him.  He smoothed Dean’s hair back and Dean sniffed back his tears in a very manly way.

“Because you meant it.  And because gross, sticky, awful sex on a scratchy blanket in a cornfield covered in bugs is still the best sex I’ve ever had too.”

Dean inhaled deeply and let it out slowly in order to dispel the upset that had come over him.  His husband’s hand cupped his cheek and his thumb gently brushed away a stray tear.

“It’s okay, Dean.  Making mistakes is not the worst thing a person can do; it’s to not learn from them.  You and I aren’t the same people we once were, but we also wouldn’t be the people we are now without all of our experiences, both the good and the bad.”

Dean closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the emotion in his husband’s eyes.

“Well, I hope you’re happy now,” Dean griped.

“Not really.  I asked you to tell me something I didn’t know about you.  I already knew all that.”

Dean opened his eyes so that he could narrow them in a glare.  He reached behind his head, grabbed a pillow, and then smacked his husband in the face.

“In college a girl made me wear panties.  Really tiny, satiny, pink panties.”

His husband pulled the pillow down and stared at him with wide eyes.

“And I _loved_ it, babe.”

His husband continued to gape for a moment, and then he grinned.  “You wanna know something you don’t know about me?”

“What?” Dean groused.

He leaned close to whisper in Dean’s ear.  “Rhonda and I went to high school together.”


End file.
